Mitreo di Santa Prisca

A mithraeum beneath the church of Santa Prisca: a long rectangular main room for the ritual banquet, preceded by two niches that held Cautes and Cautopates, the mithraic genii of dawn and dusk, of which only the marble Cautes with raised torch survives. In the end wall a large niche holds Mithras killing the bull and a reclining Saturn built of amphora fragments faced in gilded stucco; the side walls are frescoed with the sacred procession of the cult's servants bearing offerings, and another niche is decorated with seven concentric circles for the planetary spheres. Turismo Roma states that visits are temporarily suspended and advises checking the official site.

History

Found by chance in 1934 by the Augustinian Fathers. It was built into the walls of two earlier buildings, one of the late first century AD and one of the second with two aisles, over which the church was later raised. The mithraeum itself dates to the third century AD, and an inscription shows it was already in use in AD 202. It was violently destroyed around AD 400, probably by Christians, before the church was built.

History

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